Is Orange Juice Slowly Killing You? (Yes/No)
Written by: Brad Pilon
Orange juice…. Isn’t that just… you know… as bad as pop?
Is your Orange Juice slowly killing you?
It does contain fructose, and fructose has been shown to act differently in the body than glucose… but does that make it bad? Especially when found in fruit and fruit juice? AND especially when fruit sugars ARE NOT 100% Fructose! (A Large orange may contain 17 grams of sugar, but only 4.5 grams of that is fructose)
Yes, in isolation and in high amounts of fructose is ‘bad’, however what about fruit juice?
A 2000 study published in ‘The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition’ found that men and women with high LDL, or ‘bad’, cholesterol levels could significantly increase their HDL, or ‘good’, cholesterol levels by drinking 750 millilitres of orange juice daily. This seems like a good thing.
Fruit and Fruit juices also contains antioxidants that can protect your body against oxidant damage.
Here’s an interested study…
When four groups of normal-weight people were given a 300-cal drink of either
* 75 grams of glucose,
* 75 grams of fructose,
* orange juice, or
* water
There was a significant increase in measurements of Reactive Oxygen Species (Free radicals) in the people who drank the glucose drink, but not the fructose, orange juice, or water groups.
The glucose increased oxidant stress, the fructose and orange juice did not… another small win for Orange juice.
So far, this seems promising…
However, there are MANY studies linking sugar-sweetened beverages to obesity… We can’t ignore this fact.
People in studies who gained weight or who were already overweight tended to drink more sugar-sweetened beverages than those who did not gain weight or who were ‘not overweight’ by scientific standards. This seems like a major black mark on orange juice, however, ‘sugar-sweetened beverages’ includes EVERYTHING that is a beverage and sweetened. This includes Pop, Iced-tea, orange juice, Kool-aid… A good old fashioned, everything.
Admittedly, not all fruit juices are equal, some have added sugar, some may have many of their polyphenols ruined in processing (I’m looking into this now), but to compare fruit juice directly to fructose sweetened water is inaccurate, especially since there seems to be some health benefits associated with drinking fruit juice.
But the real benefit, the reason I have chosen to include fruit juice and more fruits in general into my diet is because of the powerful affect they have on endotoxins.
In fact, my latest book, available to you as a pre-release is all about Endotoxins, their role in heath and obesity, and how fruit and fruit juices can help.
You can check out the whole story here —> Good Belly Bad Belly
